This book's story begins, as all too many such stories do, with a slaughter. The horrific details are retold in the indelible images of eyewitness, but readers of this review will be spared. Suffice it to say that anyone who has children, who loves his family, who cares for others in his community, would find the prospect of witnessing such things happening to his own loved ones too shocking to even imagine.

The horror was reality for the displaced Guatemalans of Santa Maria Tzeja, a village near the border of Mexico. UC Berkeley anthropologist Beatriz Manz has spent more than two decades following and piecing together that village's story for "Paradise in Ashes," as documentation of a tale of exodus and exile, persecution and perseverance of near-biblical proportions. It happened in our time, not so far from our borders -- and with "our" government's support and tax dollars.

And many refugees from that turmoil live among us, quietly enduring the aftereffects of terror. "Many people -- both within and outside academia -- have been more fascinated with the ancient Mayan civilization than with the living Mayas," Manz pointedly notes. Although Guatemala is the largest country in Central America, few Americans are aware of the "Human Rights meltdown" that Amnesty International notes has been occurring there for decades, ever since the CIA-supported coup that overthrew a democratic government in 1954.

Some Guatemalans were able to flee landless poverty and military repression to establish new villages such as Santa Maria Tzeja in the early 1970s. The town was cleared from raw jungle, and life there was also hard, but better than near-slavery on plantations: "The Ixcan jungle consumes you, there is malaria, diarrhea; it just consumes you," recalled one settler. "But people came from all over the country to obtain a parcel in the promised land." The promise wasn't to last. By the late 1970s there were guerrilla groups forming to combat the military junta, partly emboldened by the fragile success of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. The majority of people, who just wanted to grow food and live on their own land, were caught between aggressive insurgent recruiting and military repression. And as it turned out, the guerrillas were overoptimistic, for as Manz writes, "By late 1981 the Ixcan was about to descend into a poisoned darkness; the military repression would escalate into wholesale slaughter." The indiscriminate massacre of whole families and villages had a purpose: "It was meant to induce submission and to embed fear, distrust and disunity into everyday life." Soon, at least a thousand local villagers had been killed. Those who survived fled into the jungle, their villages in ruins. "A decade of hard work lay incinerated, and dreams were shattered," Manz writes. "Hiding and fearful in the rain forest, the terrified residents of Santa Maria Tzeja knew that simply to survive would be a victory."

This was doubly true given that President Reagan in 1982 "met with Guatemalan President Rios Montt in Honduras and dismissed reports of human rights abuses in Guatemala published by Americas Watch, Amnesty International, and others as 'a bum rap.' " Reagan then lifted an arms embargo so that weapons sales could resume to the military rulers.

Many villagers made their way to refugee camps in Chiapas in southern Mexico. Some stayed in the jungle, joining the guerrilla movement out of desperation. Family members were separated for years. "For many years I have given my life to the rich; now I have to give my life to the poor," reasoned one such villager-turned-fighter.

"After the early 1980s, in particular, peasants began to join in fierce anger at army atrocities, seeking both protection and retribution through the insurgency," Manz notes. "In sum, it felt safer to have a gun in your hands." Probably for most, however, "our idea was not to give ourselves up to the army or to surrender," recalls one villager, "but to go back to live in our village and to live a normal life without being bothered by one or the other." Yet relative peace was not established until 1996, when most villagers could safely return.

The village has prospered in a relative sense, with schools and a new way of life for many. Of course, the struggles of persistent poverty remain, and some of the most poignant reflections come from the many villagers Manz asks about what they might have gained and learned in the struggle. "It would be worse if there had been no war, because then no one would have taught them (the rich, the army) to respect us," says one. "What is positive about the struggle is that it opened minds. It left big lessons," holds another. Manz is an academic, and sometimes writes like one, but she cannot be accused of keeping her distance. In fact, her own life is once threatened, and a colleague is indeed killed after tragically joking that "in America you publish or perish; in Guatemala you perish if you publish!" Her own story of researching this book involves considerable courage.

And the story Manz tells is far from over. Former dictator Rios Montt, "whose name was to become synonymous with blood-drenched slaughter and a merciless scorched earth policy," was a candidate for president in 2003 (he did not win, and may yet be tried for the genocide that occurred under his former rule). Manz writes also of Bay Area Guatemalan refugees who eke out a living here doing hard work, sending home what they can to support those who stay. Theirs may be a familiar story, but "Paradise in Ashes" makes it all too real, and deserves wide reading, if only to generate sympathy for the poorest -- and sometimes most traumatized -- among us.